“I’ll come Soons i Can. I Cant Now. i’m strapped on a Bord gettin’ my crook straTened. I’m Goin’ to Bee a traned Nurse and live to a hospittle. I’m goin’ to be strapped for—ever And Ever, ’seems if. i’m the gladdest ever ’t the house burnt up an’ Buster nocked me down an’ everything, sophy nesTor. Yours Till deth. Cross my hart. good By.”
This letter did not reach Jessica, of course, until the day following the trip to the Landing she had mentioned in her own. A trip that amused the people whom she passed along the way because of her novel method of making the broncho “go.” A trip that was to have a most astonishing ending and one to fill the “Little Captain’s” soul with unspeakable delight.
“She rose once, bobbed a returning courtesy to Jessica’s profound one.”
(See page [73])
CHAPTER XII.
MEETING AND PARTING.
The seed-and-tool store was at the Landing, close beside the wharf where the river boats stopped, on their way up and down. Across the narrow roadway was, also, the railway station. Between the whistling of engines, the rumbling of trains, it proved a most confusing spot for plain-reared Buster, and while Ephraim entered the store to make his gardening purchases, the broncho did his utmost to stand on his head or his hind heels, and in either direction to cast his rider to the ground.
In vain. The girl had been saddle-bred from her very infancy and wholly understood the vagaries of this four-footed friend.
“Now, boy, behave yourself. I’ll neither slip over your nose nor your tail. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? What’ll the people around all think of California horses, if you cut up like this? Whoa! There now, that’s better! Silly Buster! To be afraid of a train of cars that aren’t coming near you. Look at them. See. You must get acquainted with them, ’cause you’ll often, often see them. Steady, now. Good boy, Buster!”